Jesse rallies Democrats at crack of dawn

Jesse Jackson is back in action, criss-crossing Michigan on a campaign-style bus tour to energize Democratic voter turnout in the November midterms.

The civil rights activist stopped at Ford Motor Company’s River Rouge plant early on Tuesday to greet workers arriving for the 6 a.m. shift.

Jackson said working people had borne the brunt of the recession and continued to suffer two years after the government intervened to save the country’s financial system, a bailout that has proved to be unpopular with voters.

“We have Wall Street rejoicing,” he said, “while plants are going overseas and homes are in foreclosure.”

His 10-city tour through the recession-hit state is backed by the United Auto Workers union.

The “Rebuild America: Jobs, Justice, Peace” tour urges lawmakers in Washington, D.C. to pass a second stimulus package and quickly withdraw U.S. troops from Iraq and Afghanistan.

Unemployment in Michigan is running above 13 percent and the situation is even more dire in Detroit, where one in every four workers is unemployed.

Jackson said he would go “door to door, church to church and bring the spirit of Detroit back alive.”

Reporting by James B. Kelleher. Reuters photos by Tim Shaffer (Jackson speaks to media after Ford shareholders meeting in Wilmington in 2009) and Kevin Lamarque (listens to President Obama speak at the Clinton Global Initiative in New York in 2009)